While the Canadiens veterans are teeing it up in the team’s annual charity golf tournament at Laval-sur-le-Lac on Thursday, 26 hopefuls will gather in Brossard to be poked, prodded and tested.

Officially, it’s the start of the Canadiens rookie camp but, in reality, it’s the first stop on the road to St. John’s, N.L., for most of the young players.

While you will hear general manager Marc Bergevin say there’s an opportunity for players to show they deserve to stay in Montreal, it will take a super-human performance for any of these youngsters to be on the Canadiens roster when the season opens on Oct. 7 in Toronto.

Most of the rookie players will be invited to the main training camp, which begins on Sept. 17, because the Canadiens need bodies to get through a busy pre-season schedule that starts with an intra-squad scrimmage at the Bell Centre on Sept. 20, followed by seven exhibition games.

The best any of the prospects can hope for is to make a good impression before heading to the American Hockey League’s St. John’s IceCaps. From there, they’ll be expected to work hard and wait for a call up to the big club. That was the route 19-year-old Jacob de la Rose took last season and he finished the year with 33 regular-season National Hockey League games under his belt and another dozen games in his first taste of playoff action.

There are three players who come into this year’s rookie camp with the highest expectations.

Forward Michael McCarron’s stock rose last season as he helped the Ontario Hockey League’s Oshawa Generals win the Memorial Cup. At 6-foot-6 and 235 pounds, McCarron has the size the Canadiens have been looking for and he flourished after a switch from wing to centre last season. The first-round draft pick from 2013 needs work on his skating, but he’s close to being NHL-ready.

Nikita Scherbak was the Canadiens’ first-round draft pick in 2014, and the Moscow native has made a rapid adjustment to North American hockey, from learning English in record time to putting up good numbers in the Western Hockey League with 27 goals and 82 points in 65 games last season with the Everett Silvertips. At 6-foot-2 and 204 pounds, Scherbak has size to go with his skill.

Left-winger Daniel Carr was undrafted, but the Canadiens signed him as a free agent after an outstanding university career at Union College. He led the AHL’s Hamilton Bulldogs last season with 24 goals, has decent size at 6-foot and 193 pounds, and gets high marks for his work ethic.

There are a couple of mid-round draft choices who will be expected to develop in St. John’s after the Canadiens’ AHL farm team moved from Hamilton during the off-season.

Left-winger Charles Hudon had a strong rookie season in Hamilton with 19 goals, but he hit a wall midway through the season. A year of experience should help him get back on track.

Centre Jeremy Grégoire has been turning heads since he slipped to the sixth round in the 2013 NHL draft. He had a late start last season because of injury, but racked up 41 points in 32 games with the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League’s Baie Comeau Drakkar and is the kind of rugged, two-way player prized by the Canadiens.

Defenceman Noah Juulsen, the Canadiens’ first-round draft pick this year, is one of five players who will be returning to junior hockey with the Silvertips. He is also among the candidates for Team Canada at the 2016 world junior championship in Helsinki.

There are five undrafted players attending the Canadiens camp on a tryout basis. They are hoping to follow the path of David Desharnais, who earned an East Coast Hockey League contract following a tryout and eventually worked his way to the NHL.

The players will get a taste of Ontario this weekend because the Canadiens will be participating in a four-team rookie tournament in London. The young Canadiens will play the Pittsburgh Penguins rookies on Friday, the host Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday and the Ottawa Senators on Sunday.

The Canadiens’ rookie camp will wrap up in Brossard with 10:30 a.m. workouts next Tuesday and Wednesday, and the main camp will get underway with testing and physicals on Sept. 17.

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